Jordan Pickford Wins Coca-Cola Save of the Season 2025/26
Jordan Pickford has been crowned the 2025/26 Coca-Cola Save of the Season winner, rewarded for a moment of pure reflex and nerve that kept Everton’s season on track and silenced St James’ Park.
A split-second that decided everything
Everton were clinging to a 3-2 lead deep into stoppage time against Newcastle United, the kind of chaotic finale where one loose ball can rewrite the night. The cross dropped, the clearance fell, and Sandro Tonali stepped in with the technique of a training-ground volley and the venom of a last-gasp equaliser.
He caught it flush. Ferocious. Rising. Destined, almost, for the net.
Pickford refused to accept it.
In a blur of movement, the Everton goalkeeper exploded to his right, threw up a strong hand and somehow managed to divert Tonali’s rocket onto the crossbar. The ball cannoned away to safety. The away end erupted. Newcastle’s players stood frozen, arms on heads.
It was the kind of save that doesn’t just protect points. It defines reputations.
Praise from the very top
The stop had already been recognised once. It earned February’s Coca-Cola Save of the Month award, one of two monthly prizes Pickford collected in the 2025/26 campaign. No other goalkeeper managed that double. In fact, the England No 1 now has four Save of the Month awards to his name, a Premier League record.
Those inside the game did not hold back.
“It was worthy of a goal,” said Everton manager David Moyes afterwards. He knew how good Tonali’s strike was, and that made the save even more outrageous. “Tonali couldn't have hit that any better or any sweeter if he tried again. It was technically brilliant, his volley, but I have to say that the save was out of this world.”
Alan Shearer, the Premier League’s all-time leading scorer with 260 goals and a man who has beaten plenty of goalkeepers from that range, went straight to the highest bracket of praise.
“It is a brilliant strike from Sandro Tonali, but an unbelievable save,” he said. “The reaction to get that onto the bar was remarkable.”
From inside the Everton dressing room, the verdict was even more stark. Jarrad Branthwaite, watching it unfold in front of him, called it “the best save I have ever seen”.
Beating the best
The award did not fall into Pickford’s hands unchallenged. His stop at St James’ Park was one of 10 shortlisted for the Coca-Cola Save of the Season, a collection of the year’s most spectacular interventions.
Nine of those came from Premier League Save of the Month winners. The list read like a roll call of the division’s elite and emerging goalkeepers: James Trafford, Gianluigi Donnarumma, Martin Dubravka, David Raya, Alphonse Areola, Aaron Ramsdale, Karl Darlow, Tottenham Hotspur’s Antonin Kinsky – whose fingertip save against Leeds United in May also made the cut – and Pickford himself.
When the public vote was combined with the verdict of a panel of football experts, the outcome was clear. The Tonali save stood alone.
Pickford was also the only goalkeeper this season to claim two or more Save of the Month awards, underlining a campaign of consistent excellence rather than one isolated flash of brilliance.
A specialist in the spectacular
This is not new territory for him. Pickford has now won the Coca-Cola Save of the Season twice, adding the 2025/26 honour to his success in 2021/22, the inaugural year of the award.
For a goalkeeper, there are clean sheets and there are moments. This one, away at Newcastle, in stoppage time, with the match and the momentum on the line, will live long in the memory.
Everton walked away with three points. Pickford walked away with a season-defining clip and another trophy on the shelf.
The question now is simple: how many more times can he raise the bar from here?
